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DEREK PARFIT Future People, the Non-

Identity Problem, and

Person-Affecting Principles

I. FUTURE PEOPLE

Suppose we discover how we could live for a thousand years, but in a

way that made us unable to have children. Everyone chooses to live

these long lives. After we all die, human history ends, since there would

be no future people. Would that be bad? Would we have acted wrongly?

Some pessimists would answer No. These people are saddened by

the suffering in most people’s lives, and they believe it would be wrong

to inflict such suffering on others by having children. In earlier centu-

ries, this bleak view was fairly plausible. But our successors would be

able to prevent most human suffering.

Some optimists would also answer No. These people believe that

most people’s lives are worth living. But they accept two Strong Narrow

Person-Affecting Principles. On the Narrow Telic Principle:

One of two outcomes cannot be worse if this outcome would be

worse for no one.

Editor’s Note. Derek Parfit submitted a draft of this essay to Philosophy & Public Affairs on

January 1, 2017, in a state that he regarded as unfinished. Parfit died unexpectedly in the early

hours of the morning on January 2. The draft contained no notes, and it had various typographi-

cal errors and other small mistakes that Parfit would certainly have corrected before publication.

The word “[unfinished]” appears at the end of the draft. In a cover note, Parfit indicated that the

submitted draft was missing a conclusion and that he hoped to improve the article further with

the aid of reviewer comments. After being accepted, the draft was sent to Jeff McMahan, who

bears primary responsibility for editing Parfit’s manuscripts for posthumous publication and

with whom Parfit had discussed successive drafts of the article. McMahan supplied bibliographi-

cal citations, made minimal changes to correct typographical and other minor but potentially

distracting errors in the text, and inserted a few notes. He has done so in close consultation with

Larry Temkin, with whose work Parfit is in dialogue at various points in the article, and made

alterations only with Temkin’s agreement. The editors are grateful to McMahan and Temkin for

their invaluable assistance in bringing this article to its final published state.

VC 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Philosophy & Public Affairs 45, no. 2

On the Narrow Deontic Principle:

An act cannot be wrong if this act would be worse for no one.

It would not be worse, these principles imply, if there were no people,

since there would be no one for whom that would be worse. Nor would

we be acting wrongly if we all chose to have no children, thereby end-

ing human history.

These principles are, I believe, deeply mistaken. Given what our suc-

cessors could achieve in the next million or billion years, here and else-

where in our galaxy, it would be likely to be very much worse if there

were no future people. But these principles are not obviously mistaken.

We may doubt that anything could be bad if it would be bad for no one.

When we compare two outcomes, or ways in which things might go,

there are several possibilities. We can ask

Would all and only the same peopleexist in both these outcomes?

Yes No

Same People Cases

Would the same number of people exist in both these outcomes?

Yes No

Different Number Cases

Would some people existin both these outcomes?

Mixed Same Number Cases

Yes No

Same Number Cases

Different People Cases

Pure Same Number Cases

Future People, the Non-Identity

Problem, and Person-Affecting

Principles

119

Different Number Cases raise the hardest questions. One such

question is

Q1: Would the existence of more people be in itself better, if these

people’s lives would be worth living?

On the Narrow Telic Principle, the answer is No. It could not be in itself

better if more such people existed because it would not have been

worse for these people if they had never existed. Some of us find this

answer plausible. Others believe the answer to be Yes, and others are

undecided, or have no view.

It may help to think first about Pure Same Number Cases. We can ask

Q2: Compared with the existence of some people whose lives would

be worth living, would it be in itself better if there existed instead the

same number of other people whose lives would be more worth

living?

As before, on the Narrow Telic Principle, the answer is No. It could not

be better if these other people existed because these people’s non-

existence would not have been worse for them. When applied to Q2,

this answer is less plausible. We may doubt that it would be in itself

better if more people existed. But most of us would believe that

(A) if more people existed, it would be in itself better if the people

who existed were the ones whose lives would be more worth living.

This outcome would be better even though these people’s non-

existence would not have been worse for them.

In believing (A), we would be rejecting the Narrow Telic Principle.

We have other reasons to start by considering Same Number Cases.

Many of our acts will indirectly affect the number of people who will

later exist. But in most cases, we cannot predict whether our acts would

increase or reduce this number. We can justifiably ignore such unpre-

dictable effects. Many of our acts will also indirectly affect the identity

of future people, or who are the people who will later exist. That our

acts will have such effects is much easier to predict. This fact raises

problems that, until fairly recently, were overlooked.

Philosophy & Public Affairs120

To introduce these problems, we can first compare three imagined

cases. In our first Same People Case, we can suppose that

Ruth, who is pregnant, knows that, unless she takes some painless

treatment, the child she is carrying would have some disease that

would kill this child at the age of forty. If Ruth takes this treatment,

this child would live to eighty.

It would clearly be wrong for Ruth to refuse to take this treatment, since

that would be much worse for her child. Suppose next that

Sarah must decide whether to have a child. Sarah knows that any

child whom she conceives would have this same disease, and

would live to only forty. She also knows that, because this disease

would have no earlier effects, any such child’s life would be likely

to be well worth living. Sarah and her husband strongly want to

have a child, and there is no existing child whom they could

adopt.

As a Different Number Case, this raises harder questions. Most of us

would believe that it would not be wrong for Sarah to have such a child.

On this view, we can justifiably have children if we would love them

and we can justifiably believe that their lives would be likely to be well

worth living. We don’t need to ask whether it would be in itself better if

these children existed.

As our first Same Number Case, we can suppose that

Clare knows that, if she conceives some child now, this child would

have this same disease, and would live to only forty. If Clare waits for

two months, she would later conceive a child who would not have

this disease, and would live to eighty.

This case challenges the Strong Narrow Person-Affecting Principles.

Most of us would believe that

(B) it would be worse if Clare conceives a child now who would live

to only forty. She ought to wait and conceive a child who would live

to eighty.



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But if Clare conceives a child now, that would not be worse for this

child. This child’s life would be likely to be well worth living, and if

Clare had waited, this child would never have existed. It would have

been a different child whom Clare would have later conceived and who

would have lived to eighty. The Strong Narrow Person-Affecting Princi-

ples therefore conflict with (B), since these principles imply that it

would not be worse if Clare conceives a child now, nor would this act

be wrong. If we believe (B), we must reject the Strong Narrow Person-

Affecting Principles and defend our beliefs in some other way. Since

this problem arises when in different possible outcomes different peo-

ple would exist, I called this the Non-Identity Problem.

Here is one way in which this problem has been overlooked. We could

truly claim that, if Clare conceives her child now, that would be worse for

her child. But in the sense in which this claim is true, the phrase “her

child” does not refer to one particular person. This phrase refers to any

future person who could later be truly called Clare’s child. If Clare con-

ceives a child now, who would live to only forty, that wouldn’t be worse for

the actual person who would be Clare’s child. If Clare had waited, this per-

son would never have existed, since it would have been a different person

who could have later been truly called Clare’s child.

This problem can arise in other ways, and on a different scale. Given

the facts about human reproduction, it is true of most people that, if

their parents’ lives had gone even slightly differently before these peo-

ple were conceived, these people would not have been conceived, and

their parents would have had different children. Most of our choices

between two acts or policies would affect the details of our own and

other people’s lives, in ways that would cause different future people to

exist. These effects would spread, and would not, like ripples in a pool,

diminish, so that in the further future two quite different sets of people

would exist. The Strong Narrow Principles cannot be plausibly applied

to such cases.

Suppose, for example, that we and the other members of some large

community could choose between two energy policies, one of which

would be cheaper but would increase global warming, thereby having

various effects that would greatly lower the quality of life that would be

had by very many people in several later centuries. Some of the effects

of our policy—such as floods, droughts, heat waves, and hurricanes—

would kill many of these future people. Despite having these effects,


our choice of this energy policy would not be worse for any of these

people, not even those who would be killed. If we had chosen the more

expensive policy, which would not have had these bad effects, these

future people would never have existed, and their non-existence would

not have been better for them. It would have been different people who

would have existed instead, and lived much better lives. Since our

choice of the cheaper policy would not be worse for any of these future

people, the Narrow Principles imply that this choice would not make

things go worse, and could not be wrong. These implications seem to

me and others to be clearly false, and to give us decisive reasons to

reject these Narrow Principles. These choices and acts would make

things go much worse, and would be wrong. It would make no moral

difference, I believe, that these choices and acts would be worse for no

one.

When I first thought about the Non-Identity Problem, I assumed

that most people would accept this No Difference View.1 That is not yet

true. Of those who have thought about this problem, some still accept

the Strong Narrow Person-Affecting Principles. These people continue

to believe that our choices or acts could not make things go worse, or

be wrong, if these choices or acts would be worse for no one. Many

other people accept what we can call a Two-Tier View. On such views,

we have some moral reasons not to act in ways that would have such

bad effects on many future people. But these reasons are weaker than

they would have been if these bad effects had been worse for these

people.

The Non-Identity Problem must be either practically or theoretically

important. If the No Difference View is false, this problem is practically

important, since it would matter less whether our acts or policies

would have these bad effects. If the No Difference View is true, this

problem is theoretically important, since many moral theories imply or

assume that this view cannot be true.

When I first defended the No Difference View, I made what I now

believe to be a bad mistake. I suggested that, when we consider the

cases that raise the Non-Identity Problem, we should appeal to princi-

ples that are impersonal in the sense that they do not appeal to facts

1. See Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, reprinted with corrections (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1985), p. 366.



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about what would affect particular people for better or worse.2 These

principles claim that some outcomes would be worse than others even

though these outcomes would be worse for no one. My suggested prin-

ciple was

Q: If in two outcomes the same number of people would later exist,

it would be worse if the people who existed would be people whose

quality of life would be lower.3

This principle applies whether or not, in these outcomes, the same

people would exist. Q, I admitted, needs to be derived from some wider

theory that can also be plausibly applied to Different Number Cases.

Many people reject impersonal principles like Q because they believe

that this part of morality—the part concerned with effects on well-

being—ought to be explained in person-affecting terms.

I suggested how we could give such an explanation. Though we

ought to reject the Narrow Person-Affecting Principles, we might

appeal instead to what I called Wide Person-Affecting Principles. But I

then mistakenly rejected these Wide Principles because they seemed to

imply

The Repugnant Conclusion: Compared with the existence of many

people whose quality of life would be very high, there is some much

larger number of people whose existence would be better, even

though these people’s lives would be barely worth living.

I now believe that, as I shall argue below, one of these Wide Principles

both provides the best solution to the Non-Identity Problem and helps

us to avoid such repugnant conclusions.

II. POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Many people have proposed other solutions to the Non-Identity Prob-

lem. When these people discuss some of the cases that raise this prob-

lem, they claim that

2. Ibid., p. 378.

3. Ibid., p. 360.


(C) there are some ways of treating people that would be wrong even

if these acts would not, on the whole, be worse for these people.

Such acts would wrongly harm people in some particular way, or

violate these people’s rights, or treat them as a mere means, or fail to

respect them, or be condemned by some other moral principle.

Though some of these claims are plausible, they could not, I believe,

solve the Non-Identity Problem.

To explain why these proposals fail, we can compare two of my

imagined cases. Sarah’s case does not raise the Non-Identity Problem.

Since any child whom Sarah conceives would live to only forty, Sarah

has no reason to choose between the possible children whom she

might conceive. Sarah must decide whether to have any child or no

child. She also knows that any child of hers would have a life that,

despite being fairly short, would be likely to be well worth living. Given

these facts, as I have said, most of us would believe that if Sarah know-

ingly conceives such a child she would not be acting wrongly. Sarah’s

act would not harm her child, or violate this child’s rights. Sarah’s act

might have been wrong if any child of hers would have had some much

greater disadvantage, which would have made this child’s life doubt-

fully worth living. We might then have plausibly appealed to such a

child’s rights, or to the harm that Sarah’s act would have imposed on

this child. But since this child’s disadvantage is that of living to only

forty, Sarah’s treatment of this child is not wrong.

Suppose next that, like Sarah, Clare knowingly conceives a child who

will live to only forty. Clare also knows that this child’s life would be

likely to be well worth living. If we believe that Clare’s act is wrong, we

could not defend this belief by appealing to claims like those men-

tioned in (C). We could not claim that Clare’s act is wrong because this

act would be worse for this child, or would harm this child, or violate

any of this child’s rights. Clare treats her child in the same way in which

Sarah treats her child, and Sarah’s act is not wrong. If Clare’s act is

wrong, as most of us would believe, this act cannot be made to be

wrong by this act’s effects on Clare’s child, or on other existing people.

This act is wrong because, unlike Sarah, Clare could have easily con-

ceived a different child who would have lived to eighty.

When people respond to the Non-Identity Problem by making

claims like those mentioned in (C), most of these people seem to



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assume that an act’s wrongness depends only on how this act would

affect some of the people who are or will be actual. In the cases that

raise the Non-Identity Problem, that is not true. An act’s wrongness

may depend on how some other possible act would have affected peo-

ple who are merely possible, but who, if we had acted in this other way,

would have been actual. To solve the Non-Identity Problem, we must

explain how certain acts can be made to be wrong by such facts about

some merely possible people, even if these acts would not be worse for

any actual people.

In an excellent recent book, David Boonin forcefully criticizes several

of these proposed solutions to the Non-Identity Problem.4 Boonin then

proposes his own solution. Boonin rejects the Strong Narrow Telic Prin-

ciple since he believes that, in the cases that we are considering, certain

acts or policies would make things go much worse, even though these

acts or policies would be worse for no one. But Boonin accepts the

Strong Narrow Deontic Principle. He claims that

(D) there is no Non-Identity Problem. In all of the cases that seem to

raise this problem, we can justifiably appeal to this Narrow Deontic

Principle. We can claim that, if certain acts would be worse for no

one, these acts cannot be wrong.5

Boonin admits that, in some cases, this Deontic Principle has implausi-

ble implications. Boonin imagines someone, Wilma, who acts like my

imagined Clare. To avoid the inconvenience of taking some pills, Wilma

chooses to conceive a child who will have some genetic disease or dis-

ability rather than conceiving some other, healthy child. It would be

implausible, Boonin claims, to deny that Wilma’s act is wrong. Boonin

also supposes that,

as members of some wealthy society, we could choose some Risky

Energy Policy that would make things go slightly better for us than

some safe alternative, but would also be likely to cause toxic

4. David Boonin, The Non-Identity Problem and the Ethics of Future People (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2014).

5. This is not a quotation from Boonin’s book but is Parfit’s understanding of the main

claim underlying Boonin’s position.


wastes to leak five hundred years later, killing tens of thousands of

people.6

Our choice of the Risky Policy would not be worse for the people who

would later be killed, since if we had chosen some safe alternative these

people would never have existed, and that would not have been better

for them. But we may find it hard to believe that, as the Narrow Deontic

Principle implies, our choice of this risky policy would not be wrong.

As Boonin writes:

Will we really be willing to accept that it is not wrong to kill tens of

thousands of innocent people just in order to enjoy a slightly higher

standard of living?7

Boonin calls this the Even More Implausible Conclusion.

Since these conclusions are implausible, we cannot solve the Non-

Identity Problem merely by accepting them. Boonin’s proposed solu-

tion makes some further claims. These conclusions, Boonin argues, are

not as implausible as they seem to be. There are other cases in which,

though we could make things go much better by acting in some way at

little cost to ourselves, failing to act in this way would not be wrong. In

Boonin’s main example, we rich people know that if we gave some fairly

small sum of money to some aid agency, we would enable this agency

to save some distant child’s life.8 Most of us would believe that, though

it would be better if we gave this money to this aid agency, our failure

to give this money would not be wrong. Similar remarks apply, Boonin

claims, to Wilma’s act of conceiving a diseased child rather than a dif-

ferent, healthy child. Boonin calls it “perfectly plausible” that, like our

failure to give the money that would save some distant child’s life, Wil-

ma’s act would not be wrong. We are not always morally required to do

what would prevent things from going much worse. The case of the

6. This indented passage is not a quotation from Boonin but is a new statement of an

example first presented in Reasons and Persons (pp. 371–77), a slightly modified version

of which is discussed in various places in Boonin’s Non-Identity Problem. The version

here combines details from both the original version and Boonin’s.

7. Boonin, The Non-Identity Problem, p. 220.

8. Boonin does not regard this as his “main example” and wrote to Parfit in explana-

tion; but this was so soon before Parfit died that he was unable to make further revisions.



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127

Risky Energy Policy, Boonin concedes, is more troubling. It is hard to

believe that we could justifiably choose some policy that would later

kill tens of thousands of people just in order to enjoy a slightly higher

standard of living. But Boonin claims that there is no other, less

implausible solution to the Non-Identity Problem.

That is not, I believe, true. Since Boonin accepts the Strong Narrow

Deontic Principle, his argument for his solution assumes that

(E) in the cases that seem to raise the Non-Identity Problem, if some

act would be worse for no one, this act cannot be wrong.

We can justifiably reject (E). We can claim that

(F) it is wrong to do what would make things go much worse if some

other possible act would not be worse for anyone, or violate anyone’s

rights, or have any other moral flaw.

Boonin writes that, if Wilma chooses to conceive a diseased child now

rather than later conceiving a different, healthy child, Wilma’s act

would be “a little bit better for her but far worse from the point of view

of overall human well-being.”9 We can plausibly assume that, if Wilma

instead conceived a healthy child, this other act would not be worse for

Wilma or for anyone else, nor would this act violate anyone’s rights, or

have any other moral flaw. As (F) would then imply, Wilma’s act of con-

ceiving a diseased child would be wrong. Similar claims apply to the

other cases that raise the Non-Identity Problem. In such cases, (E) and

(F) conflict, and (F) is more plausible.

Boonin might reply that, in such cases, there would seldom be

some other possible act of the kind described by (F). In most cases

of these kinds, he might say, we could avoid making things go much

worse only at some significant cost to ourselves. We can suppose

that, in a different version of Wilma’s case, Wilma could conceive a

healthy child only by acting in some way that would impose some

significant burden on herself. This would be like a case in which it is

only by giving much money that we could enable some aid agency

to save some distant child’s life. Boonin might then claim that, just

9. Boonin, The Non-Identity Problem, p. 195.


as it would not be wrong for us to choose not to give this much

money to this aid agency, it would not be wrong for Wilma to choose

not to bear the burden that would enable her to conceive a healthy

child.

This reply could not, however, defend Boonin’s (E). We are not

here discussing the demandingness of morality, and asking how

great the burdens are that we ought to bear when that is our only

way to avoid making things go much worse. We are asking whether,

in the cases that raise the Non-Identity Problem, some act could be

wrong even though this act would not be worse for anyone. This

question takes its clearest form when we suppose that such an act

would make things go much worse and that some other possible act

would not be worse for anyone, or violate anyone’s rights, or have

any other moral flaw. Given these facts, as (F) implies, the first of

these acts would be wrong. These cases are enough to show that (E)

is false. Boonin’s claims do not, I conclude, solve the Non-Identity

Problem.

There is a better solution. Following McMahan, we can claim:

If someone is caused to exist and to have a life that is worth living,

that is good for this person, giving him or her an existential benefit.

There are similar existential harms.10

We can next distinguish two other person-affecting principles. Accord-

ing to

The Weak Narrow Principle: One of two outcomes would be in one

way worse if this outcome would be worse for people.

According to

The Wide Principle: One of two outcomes would be in one way worse

if this outcome would be less good for people, by benefiting people

less than the other outcome would have benefited people.

10. Jeff McMahan, “Causing People to Exist and Saving People’s Lives,” Journal of

Ethics 17 (2013): 6–7.



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129

When we are considering outcomes in which all of the same people

would exist, these Narrow and Wide Principles coincide. In such cases,

if one of two outcomes would be worse for some people, this outcome

would also be less good for these people. But when some people would

exist in only one of two outcomes, these principles may not coincide.

Even if some outcome would be worse for no one, this outcome may

be less good for people than the other outcome would have been for

the different people who, in this other outcome, would have existed.

That would be true when this other outcome would have given these

other people greater existential benefits. In such cases, these Narrow

and Wide Principles may deeply conflict.

We ought, I shall argue, to reject the Weak Narrow Principle. We can

claim that there are existential benefits, and appeal to the Wide Princi-

ple, thereby solving the Non-Identity Problem.

Suppose again that, by choosing the cheaper energy policy that

would increase global warming, we would greatly lower the quality of

life of very many future people, and would indirectly cause many of

these people to be killed. Our choice of this policy would not be

worse for these future people, since it would not have been better for

them if they had never existed. In causing these people to exist, our

policy may even be good for them. But this policy would be much

less good for these people than the more expensive, better policy

would have been for the different people who would have existed

instead and had much better lives. That is how our policy would

make things go worse, and would be wrong. It is similarly true that,

when Clare conceives a child who will live to only forty, Clare’s act is

not worse for this child, but Clare’s act benefits this child much less

than Clare could have benefited a different child who would have

lived to eighty. That is how Clare’s act would make things go worse,

and would be wrong.

Return next to my imagined case in which we discover how we could

live for a thousand years, but in a way that would make us unable to

have children. If we all chose to benefit ourselves in this way, we would

end human history. The Strong Narrow Principles imply that, if these

acts would be worse for no one, they could not make things go worse,

and would not be wrong. We should reject these claims. These acts

would be likely to make things go very much worse by being very much

less good for us than the survival of humanity would be for very many


future people. It would be similarly wrong to increase or ignore existen-

tial risks to the future of humanity.

III. EXISTENTIAL BENEFITS AND HARMS

In defending these claims, we can first ask

Q3: If our lives are worth living, were we benefited by being caused

to exist?

Many people would answer No. Some of these people argue:

Benefits are comparative. One of two outcomes benefits us only

when the other outcome would have been worse for us.

If we had not been caused to exist, this fact could not have been

worse for us, since there would have been no us for whom our non-

existence could have been worse.

Therefore,

Being caused to exist cannot have benefited us.

We can reject this argument. We can reply:

Benefits are intrinsic. Our being caused to exist benefited us by

being intrinsically good for us, even though our non-existence would

not have been worse for us.

We can add:

It is true that, if we had never existed, there would have been no us

who did not receive this benefit. But there is an actual person, us,

who did.

Things of some kind are intrinsically or in themselves good or bad

when what makes them good or bad are their intrinsic properties, or

what they are like in themselves. We can consider each of these things



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on their own, and ask how good or bad this thing is. There are some

other things whose goodness or badness is not intrinsic, since it

depends on how these things are related to other things. One trivial

example is the goodness of sporting teams. We cannot consider each

team separately and ask how good it is. To assess the goodness of these

teams, we must know what happens when these teams play other

teams. Some team would be good, for example, if this team beats most

other teams. These kinds of goodness or badness we can call essentially

comparative.11

When people give the argument stated above, they rightly assume

that most benefits are in one way comparative, since most of the out-

comes that benefit us are better for us than some alternative. Having

friends, for example, is better than having no friends. But the goodness

of having friends is not essentially comparative. Friendships are intrin-

sically good, as are most of the other good things in our lives. We can

therefore reject the first premise of the argument stated above. We can

be benefited by being caused to exist and to have a good and happy

life, even though the alternative, in which we never existed, would not

have been worse for us. These are the benefits that I am calling

existential.

Similar claims apply more clearly to existential harms. Some lives

are intrinsically bad, and worse than lives that are merely not worth liv-

ing. Suppose that, in Case One, either

Sam will exist and have fifty years of suffering

or

Sam will never exist.

It would be worse if Sam was caused to exist and to live this wretched

life. If we believed that all benefits and harms are essentially compara-

tive, and we appealed only to the Weak Narrow Principle, we could not

explain why it would be worse if Sam was caused to have this wretched

11. See Larry Temkin, Rethinking the Good: Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical

Reasoning (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 229–31.


life. If Sam had never existed, there would not have been a Sam for

whom his non-existence would have been better.

Some people suggest that, to explain why it would be worse if Sam

was caused to have such a life, we would have to appeal to some imper-

sonal principle, such as the claim that it would be worse if there was

more suffering. But we don’t need to appeal to any such principle. We

can claim that most harms are intrinsic. The badness of these harms

does not consist in their being in some way worse than some

alternatives.

Here is another way to explain this distinction. If we assumed that

harms and benefits are all essentially comparative, we might claim that

(G) it would be worse if Sam exists and has this wretched life

because it would have been better for Sam if he had never existed.

But this claim misleadingly suggests that, if Sam had never existed,

there would have been a person, Sam, for whom his never existing

would have been better. That seems close to a contradiction. We might

distinguish between being and existing, so that we could claim that

Sam would have been a non-existing person.

We can, I believe, draw such distinctions. But there is no need to do

that here. We can claim instead that

(H) it would be worse if Sam exists and has this wretched life

because Sam’s life would be bad for him, and his non-existence

would not have been bad for him.

In claiming (H), we are not comparing Sam’s state, if he exists, with the

state Sam would have been in if he had never existed. We are merely

claiming that being in a state that is bad is worse than not being in any

bad state. Having fifty years of suffering is intrinsically bad, and such

badness doesn’t have to involve being worse than some other state that

either Sam, or we, might have been in. All the badness of Sam’s suffer-

ing would be had by this suffering. That is what makes such badness

intrinsic rather than comparative.

As we have seen, there are two closely related questions here. One is

the question whether our states can be good or bad only by being bet-

ter or worse than other states. The other is the question whether it can



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133

be good, or bad, to be caused to exist and to be in certain states, rather

than never to exist. To illustrate this distinction, we can appeal to simi-

lar claims about the badness or goodness of being killed. We can agree

that, in most cases,

(I) we are harmed only if we are caused to be worse off than we

would otherwise have been.

But this claim does not apply to our being killed, since having ceased

to exist is not a way of being badly off. We are harmed by being killed,

we could instead claim, when and because the rest of our life would

have been intrinsically good for us.

Similar claims apply to our being caused to exist. We can agree that

in most cases,

(J) we are harmed only if some relevant alternative would have been

better for us.

But this claim does not apply to our being caused to exist. Like having

ceased to exist, never existing is not a way of being badly off. Unlike

our being killed, our never existing could not even be bad for us, or

good for us, since there would have been no us for whom our non-

existence could have been good, or bad. But these facts do not imply

that it could not be bad for us to be caused to exist and have a life

that is full of suffering. If we exist, there is an us for whom our having

being caused to have this life was bad. Nor would our life be made to

be less bad for us by the fact that our non-existence would not have

been better for us. Similar claims apply to lives that are intrinsically

good. We can be benefited by being caused to exist and to have an

intrinsically good life, though our non-existence would not have

been worse for us.

Here is another way to defend these claims. It is clear that

(K) if Sam already exists, and we acted in some way that caused

Sam’s life to be full of suffering, we would be harming Sam by doing

something that would be bad for him.

If we accept (K), we should also accept that


(L) if we acted in some way that caused Sam’s life to be full of suffer-

ing, we would be harming Sam by doing something that would be

bad for him.

These acts would both be ways of causing Sam to have a life that was

full of suffering. It would not be less bad for Sam, nor would it do less

to make the outcome worse, if we caused Sam to have this wretched

life by causing Sam to exist.

Some defenders of the Weak Narrow Principle accept some of these

claims. These people believe that it can be bad for someone to be

caused to exist and have a life that is intrinsically bad, even though the

alternative would not have been better for this person. But though

these people accept that there can be such existential harms, they deny

that there can be existential benefits. On this asymmetrical view, though

it can be bad for people to be caused to exist, it cannot be good for peo-

ple to be caused to exist.

This view could not, I believe, be true. It is fairly plausible to claim

that all harms and benefits are comparative, since no outcome could

harm or benefit us unless some alternative would have been better for

us, or worse for us. But we cannot plausibly claim that, though harms

are intrinsic, benefits are essentially comparative. If it can be bad for

people to be caused to exist and have some wretched life, even though

their non-existence would not have been better for them, it could be

similarly good for people to be caused to exist and have some happy

life even though their non-existence would not have been worse for

them. We can at most claim that our moral reasons not to harm people

are in some ways stronger than our reasons to benefit people. These

differences would be a matter of degree.

When people deny that there are existential benefits, some of them

appeal to Jan Narveson’s distinction between two ways of increasing

happiness. Narveson claimed that, though it is good to make people

happy, it is not good but morally neutral to make happy people.12 We

could not defensibly make such a claim about two ways of increasing

suffering. Compared with making people miserable, it would be just as

bad to make miserable people.

12. Jan Narveson, “Moral Problems of Population,” Monist 57 (1973): 80.



Principles

135

Suppose next that we reject this asymmetrical view, since we believe

that there can be existential benefits as well as existential harms. Some

people appeal to another asymmetry. On this view, if we knowingly

caused someone to exist whose life would be full of suffering, and

worse than nothing, there would be an actual person whom we had

harmed, and thereby wronged. If instead we fail to cause some happy

person to exist, there would be no actual person whom we had failed to

benefit, and thereby wronged. On what we can call this

No Complainants Claim: An act cannot be wrong unless there is or

will be someone whom this act has wronged.

This claim is wider than the Strong Narrow Deontic Principle, since

this claim allows that people might be wronged by some act even

though this act is not worse for them. Some of the clearest cases

involve wronging people after they are dead.

This No Complainants Claim has considerable psychological force.

It also has moral force. On Scanlon’s plausible version of contractual-

ism, we act wrongly if our act is disallowed by some principle that no

one could reasonably reject.13 If we accept this view, we might add that

no one could reasonably reject some principle unless this principle’s

acceptance would be in some way worse for them. On this narrow ver-

sion of Scanlon’s view, if we fail to benefit people by failing to cause

them to exist, we would have done nothing that would be worse for

any particular people, so we could not have acted wrongly. We would

not have failed to treat some people in some way that we owed to

them, since we can’t owe anything to people who never exist.

As Scanlon notes, however, these claims do not cover the whole of

morality. Nor do they describe the only way in which we have reasons

to want to be related to others. Our aim should not be only to avoid

doing what would be worse for other people. It is true that, if we don’t

cause people to exist, there would be no actual people who would have

reasons to regret this failure to benefit them. It is also true, however,

that if we cause people to exist and have lives that are worth living,

there would be actual people who would have reasons to be grateful

13. T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University

Press, 1998).


about this way in which we had benefited them. We may believe that,

compared with giving people reasons to be grateful about what we

have done to them, it is morally more important not to give people rea-

sons to regret what we have done to them. But this would again be only

a difference of degree. Here is another similar claim. To avoid giving

people reasons to complain about what we had done to them, it is

enough to do nothing that would be bad for these people. We could

achieve this moral aim in a purely negative way, by doing nothing.

Though non-maleficence is negative, beneficence is positive. We can

give people reasons to be grateful only by doing things that are good

for these people. And though it is morally important not to act badly, it

is also morally important to act well.

I shall return to the No Complainants Claim.14 But I am now discus-

sing, not which acts would be morally permissible or wrong, but which

outcomes would be better or worse.

IV. NARROW AND WIDE PERSON-AFFECTING PRINCIPLES

We can next draw some more distinctions. Some relation is transitive

when it is true that, if this relation holds between X and Y, and between

Y and Z, this relation must also hold between X and Z. Being taller than

is one example. If Tom is taller than Dick, who is taller than Harry, Tom

must be taller than Harry. Many relations are not transitive. Loving

someone is one example. It may be true that Tom loves Dick, who loves

Harry, but Tom does not love Harry.

There are, I have claimed, two ways of being good or bad, and better

or worse than other things. Things of some kind are intrinsically good

or bad when their goodness or badness depends only on their intrinsic

properties, or what they are like in themselves. When we compare the

goodness or badness of such things, we can consider each of them sep-

arately and try to decide how good or bad they are. Intrinsically better

than is a transitive relation. If X is in itself better than Y, which is in

itself better than Z, X must be in itself better than Z. There are some

other things whose goodness or badness is not intrinsic but essentially

comparative, because how good or bad they are depends on how they

14. Parfit does not return to the No Complainants Claim, though he does return to the

issue of complaints later in section V when he discusses Case Two.



Principles

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are related to other things. Of these ways of being comparatively better

than, some are transitive, but others are not.

The goodness of weight lifters is intrinsic, since it depends entirely

on what are the heaviest weights that, when acting on their own, peo-

ple are able to lift. When applied to weight lifters, the relation better

than is transitive, because the relation heavier than is transitive. If Tom

can lift heavier weights than Dick, who can lift heavier weights than

Harry, Tom can lift heavier weights than Harry. The goodness of sport-

ing teams, in contrast, is essentially comparative. In trying to decide

how good such teams are, we must know what happens when these

teams play other teams. We can then describe some ways in which

some teams are better than others. According to

The Numerical Criterion: One of two sporting teams is better if this

team beats more other teams.

On this criterion, the relation better than is transitive. If team X beats

more other teams than Y, which beats more other teams than Z, X must

beat more other teams than Z. There are some other criteria that are

essentially pairwise comparative, since they imply that the relative

goodness of two things depends entirely on some relation between

these two things. According to

The Always Beats Criterion: One of two sporting teams is better if,

whenever these teams play, the first team wins.

This way of being better than is not transitive. It might be true that

team X always beats team Y, which always beats team Z, which

always beats team X. Such claims can be true when different teams

have different weaknesses and strengths. This criterion would then

imply that X is better than Y, which is better than Z, which is better

than X. Each of these three teams would be worse than one of the

others.

When Temkin discusses these criteria, he suggests that we ought to

reject the Always Beats Criterion and accept some version of the

Numerical Criterion. I suggest that we regard these criteria as describ-

ing two ways in which some sporting teams may be better than others.

The Numerical Criterion describes a more important way of being a


better team. But if one team always beats another, there is a clear non-

transitive sense in which this team is better. We should not claim that X

is in no sense better than Y even though, whenever these teams play, it

is X that wins. X is better than Y, we could say, in the always beats

sense.

In his magnificent book Rethinking the Good, Temkin sometimes

claims that, when applied to outcomes, the relation all things consid-

ered better than is not transitive.15 But this claim oversimplifies Tem-

kin’s view. Temkin rightly assumes that the phrase “better than” can be

used in different senses, which refer to different relations. Temkin

argues that, though some outcomes are intrinsically better than others

in a sense that is transitive, such claims may apply to only a “severely

limited part of the normative realm.” I believe that many outcomes,

and many other things, are intrinsically good or bad, in ways that make

them better or worse than others. Such goodness or badness is not

essentially comparative, since it does not consist in being related in

certain ways to other things.

Return now to

the Weak Narrow Principle: One of two outcomes would be in one

way worse if this outcome would be worse for people,

and

the Wide Principle: One of two outcomes would be in one way worse

if this outcome would be less good for people, by benefiting people

less than the other outcome would have benefited people.

Given the similarity between the meanings of “worse for” and “less

good for,” there may seem to be little difference between these princi-

ples. But that is not so.

There are some deep differences between these principles. One dif-

ference, as I have claimed, is in the range of cases to which these prin-

ciples apply. When we consider the further future, there are many cases

in which no one would exist in more than one of the possible out-

comes. In these very many cases, the Strong Narrow Telic Principle

15. Temkin, Rethinking the Good, esp. pp. 217–28.



Principles

139

implies that none of these outcomes could be worse than any of the

others, and the Weak Narrow Principle fails to imply that any of these

outcomes would be worse than any others. The Wide Principle, in con-

trast, applies to all possible cases.

The Wide Principle makes claims about the intrinsic goodness of dif-

ferent outcomes. On this principle, one of two outcomes would be

intrinsically worse if this outcome would benefit people less, and these

relations are both transitive. If A would benefit people less than B,

which would benefit people less than C, outcome A must benefit peo-

ple less than C. Similar claims apply to harming people more.

When we apply the Wide Principle, we can consider each outcome

on its own, and ask how good or bad this outcome would be for people.

An outcome’s intrinsic goodness does not depend on its relation to

other outcomes. When we apply the Weak Narrow Principle, which is

not about intrinsic goodness or badness, we cannot consider each out-

come on its own. We cannot ask whether some outcome would be bet-

ter for people, or worse for people, since these relations are essentially

comparative, holding only between different outcomes. There is

another relevant distinction. When we are considering outcomes in

which all and only the same people would exist, the relation worse for

people may be transitive. But when some people would exist in only

some of the outcomes that we are considering, the relation worse for

people is not transitive. Even if A would be worse for people than B,

which would be worse for people than C, A may not be worse for peo-

ple than C. A may even be better for people than C.

In comparing the Weak Narrow and Wide Principles, we can apply

them to some imagined cases in which certain people might exist and

have shorter or longer lives. We can suppose that each extra year of life

would be an equal benefit, and that there would be no other relevant

differences between these imagined people. We can also ignore various

indirect effects. My main claims could be applied to more complicated

and realistic cases. In some of my imagined cases, the Weak Narrow

Principle coincides with the widely accepted

Pareto Principle: One of two outcomes would be worse if this out-

come would be worse for some people and better for no one.

Suppose that, in Case Two, some possible outcomes are:


A: Tom will Dick will _________live to 60 live to 80

B: Tom will _________ Harry willlive to 80 live to 60

C: ______ Dick will Harry willlive to 60 live to 80

I use “_____” to mean “will never exist.”

The Narrow Principle here implies that outcome A would be in one way

worse than outcome B, since A would be worse than B for Tom and B would

be worse than A for no one. B would be similarly worse than C by being

worse than C for Harry and better than C for no one. C would be similarly

worse than A by being worse than A for Dick and better than A for no one.

We can next suppose that there are no other morally relevant differ-

ences between these three outcomes. The Narrow Principle then

implies that each of these outcomes would be worse than one of the

others. On this view, when applied to such outcomes, all things consid-

ered worse than would not be a transitive relation. If we were using

worse than in some sense that is not intrinsic but essentially pairwise

comparative, these claims would be coherent, since they would be like

the claim that, in the always beaten by sense, each of three sporting

teams is worse than one of the others. But if we used worse than and

better than in these non-transitive senses, it would be harder for us to

reach true beliefs about what we had more reason to prefer, and to do.

To give one example, our beliefs would imply that, if we changed the

world in a series of ways each of which was a change for the better,

these changes might together make the world worse than it was at the

start.16 If that were true, it would be very unclear which of these

changes, if any, we had more reason to make.

There is a better view. Rather than asking which of these outcomes

would be worse for people than others, we should claim that these are

intrinsic benefits, and ask instead how good for people these outcomes

would be. In Case Two, each of these outcomes would give one person the

intrinsic benefit of living to eighty and give one other person the benefit

of living to sixty. As the Wide Principle implies, these three outcomes

would be equally good because they would be equally good for people.

16. See Temkin, Rethinking the Good, pp. 79–85.



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We can next briefly return to the Two-Tier View. On this view, we

admit that there are existential benefits, but we claim that these bene-

fits have less weight than ordinary comparative benefits.17 In Case Two,

some possible outcomes are:




On the Two-Tier View, the comparative benefit of twenty years that B

gives Tom morally outweighs the net existential benefit of twenty years

that A gives Dick. (This net benefit is the benefit to Dick minus the ben-

efit to Harry.) The Two-Tier View therefore implies that worse than is

not transitive, since this view implies that A would be worse than B,

which would be worse than C, which would be worse than A. To avoid

these implications, we must appeal instead to the Wide Principle.

Suppose next that, in Case Three, some possible outcomes are:

D: Mary will Kate will _______ ________live to 70 live to 50

E: _______ Kate will Ruth will ________live to 60 live to 25

F _______ _________ Ruth will Jill willlive to 30 live to 10

The Weak Narrow Principle here implies that D would be worse than E,

since D would be worse than E for Kate and E would not be worse than

D for anyone. E would be similarly worse than F since E would be worse

than F for Ruth and F would not be worse than E for anyone. These

claims are the opposite of the truth. D would be better than E, which

would be better than F. If Mary lives to seventy and Kate lives to fifty,

that would be better than if Kate lives to sixty and Ruth lives to twenty-

five, which would be better than if Ruth lives to thirty and Jill lives to ten.

Suppose next that these claims use worse than in a transitive sense.

The Weak Narrow Principle would then imply that D would be worse

17. See McMahan, “Causing People to Exist and Saving People’s Lives,” pp. 15–20.


than F. That is even more clearly false. We have no reason of any kind to

believe that D would be worse than F. If two people live for a total of 120

years, that would not be in any way worse than if these people never

exist and two other people exist instead and live for a total of only forty

years. The first of these outcomes would clearly be much better.

Defenders of the Weak Narrow Principle might reply that they are

using worse than in some non-transitive sense. They might then claim

that, though their view implies that D would be worse than E, which

would be worse than F, their view does not imply that D would be worse

than F. But this reply would not answer these objections. Case Three does

nothing to support the view that, in comparing these outcomes, we

should use worse than in some non-transitive sense. And even if defend-

ers of the Weak Narrow Principle deny that, on their view, D would be

worse than F, they must admit that, on their view, D would be worse than

E, and E would be worse than F. These claims are both clearly false.

Case Three also illustrates how the Weak Narrow Principle goes

astray. When we apply this principle to any pair of outcomes, this prin-

ciple takes into account only what would happen to the people who

would exist in both these outcomes. On this principle, D would be

worse than E because D would give Kate ten fewer years of life. This

principle ignores the fact that D would give Mary seventy years of life

and that E would give Ruth only twenty-five years. When this principle

similarly implies that E would be worse than F, because E would give

Ruth five fewer years of life, this principle ignores the fact that E would

give Kate sixty years of life and F would give Jill only ten years. It is an

obvious mistake to ignore these facts.

The Weak Narrow Principle ignores these facts because this principle

assumes that benefits are essentially comparative. On this principle, D

is worse than E because D is worse than E for Kate, and D is not better

than E for Mary. It is irrelevant that, in outcome D, Mary lives for sev-

enty years. These seventy years of life do not benefit Mary, this princi-

ple assumes, because we are benefited only when some alternative

would have been worse for us, and it would not be worse for Mary if

the actual outcome would be E, in which Mary never exists. We should

reject these claims. Mary’s seventy years of life in E would be intrinsi-

cally good for her. To explain the different claim that F would be worse

than D, we can appeal to intrinsic benefits and to the Wide Principle.

We can claim that, though F would not be worse for people than D, F



Principles

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would be less good for people than D. If Ruth lives to thirty and Jill lives

to ten, that would be less good for them, or would benefit them less,

than the benefits to Mary and Kate of living to seventy and to fifty.

Suppose next that, in Case Four, some possible outcomes are:

A: Tom will have _________ Harry will have50 years of pain 1 day of pain

B: ______ Dick will have Harry will have1 day of pain 2 days of pain

This case illustrates another objection to the Weak Narrow Principle.

Because this principle is essentially comparative, asking only which out-

comes would be worse for people, this principle ignores the intrinsic

badness of these outcomes. Since B would be worse than A for Harry,

and B would not be better than A for anyone, the Weak Narrow Principle

implies that B would be worse than A. This implication is absurd. Harry’s

one extra day of pain in B does very much less to make the outcome

worse than Tom’s more than eighteen thousand days of pain in A. As the

Wide Principle implies, A would be much worse than B.

These three cases provide, I believe, decisive objections to the Weak

Narrow Principle. This principle has implications that are clearly false,

and it has these implications because it ignores some of the morally

relevant facts.

V. THE GOODNESS OF OUTCOMES AND THE RIGHTNESS OF ACTS

Temkin questions some of these claims. Return to Case Two, in which

some possible outcomes are:




The Weak Narrow Principle implies, I have claimed, that A would be

worse than B, which would be worse than C, which would be worse

than A. That is not true, since these outcomes would be equally good.


Temkin suggests an answer to this objection. If we accept the Weak

Narrow Principle, Temkin suggests, we might claim that

(M) if only outcomes A and B are possible, A would be worse than B,

because A would be worse than B for one person and better for no

one. If instead all three outcomes are possible, these outcomes would

be equally good, because they would all be worse for one person

than one of the other outcomes, and worse by the same amount.18

If this claim were true, Case Two would not provide an objection to the

Narrow Principle and the Two-Tier View.

The goodness of outcomes could not, I believe, vary in the way

described by (M). The word “outcome” is sometimes used to refer only

to the effects of some act. I use “outcome” in a wider sense, which refers

to any way in which things might go, or might have gone, or to events in

a sense that includes acts. If some people suffer, or die young, for exam-

ple, these would be outcomes in this wide sense. When Temkin sup-

poses that, in Case Two, only outcomes A and B are possible, he is

supposing that these are the only outcomes that we could bring about.

But the goodness or badness of outcomes, or events, does not depend

on whether we could bring them about. If ten people’s lives were saved,

for example, that would be better than if five people’s lives were saved.

This outcome would be better whether or not anyone could save any of

these people’s lives. We can similarly claim that, if outcome A would be

worse than outcome B, as the Narrow Principle implies, this would be

true whether or not we could bring about either or both these out-

comes, or could bring about outcome C. Since the goodness of out-

comes could not vary in the way described by (M), this defense of the

Narrow Principle and the Two-Tier View does not succeed.

Temkin might revise his suggestion. Though the goodness of out-

comes does not depend on which outcomes are causally possible in the

sense that we could bring them about, the rightness of acts may

depend on which acts are in this sense possible. Suppose that we could

either

18. Compare Temkin, Rethinking the Good, pp. 427–34.



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X: Save the life of some stranger at some great risk to ourselves

or

Y: Do nothing.

If these are the only possible acts, X would be morally admirable, but Y

would not be wrong. We are not morally required to risk our own life even

if we could thereby save some stranger. Suppose next that we could also

Z: Save both this stranger and another stranger at this same risk to

ourselves.

If we knew that Z was possible, our doing X rather than Y would be

wrong. If we risk our life to save one person’s life, it would be wrong not

to save two people’s lives at no greater risk to ourselves. Whether doing

X would be wrong here depends on which other acts are possible.

Return now to Case Two. Temkin suggests that

(N) if we could bring about only outcomes A or B, A would be worse

than B, but if we could also bring about outcome C, these three out-

comes would be equally good.

The goodness of outcomes could not, I have claimed, vary in this way.

But Temkin might instead claim that

(O) if we could bring about only outcomes A or B, we ought to bring

about B, but if we could also bring about C, it would not be true that

we ought to bring about B, since these three acts would then be

equally good.

Temkin might explain this claim in a narrow person-affecting way, by

appealing to claims about what would be worse for people. Temkin

might say that, if we could not bring about C, it would be wrong for us

to bring about A, since Tom would have a justified complaint. Tom

could appeal to the fact that A would be worse than B for him, and A

would not be better than B for anyone else. Since we could not bring

about C, neither Harry nor Dick would have a similar complaint. If


instead we could bring about C, none of these three people would have

a justified complaint against any of these three acts. Though A would

be worse than B for Tom and better for no one, B would be similarly

worse than C for Harry and better for no one, and C would be similarly

worse than A for Dick and better for no one. That is why, if we could

bring about each of these outcomes, none of these acts would be what

we ought to do. Either these acts would all be permissible, or we ought

to choose between them in some other way. Temkin’s main claims are

about the goodness of outcomes. But Temkin sometimes states these

claims in ways that also apply to what we ought to choose and to do.

Temkin might therefore be happy to reject (M) and (N) and to appeal

instead to (O). If we can reject (M), that would help to defend the view

that, when applied to outcomes, all things considered better than is a

transitive relation. This would be, as Temkin claims, a welcome

conclusion.

In distinguishing between the goodness of such outcomes and the

rightness of such acts, it may help to consider a simpler case. Suppose

that, in Case Five, two possible outcomes are:

A: Jack will Jane will ________live to 70 live to 80

B: Jack will _______ Sally willlive to 71 live to 60

Some of our beliefs about such cases may depend on our temporal

point of view. Suppose first that none of these three people now exists.

Jack, we assume, is a future person in the sense that Jack will exist. Jane

and Sally are possible people, either of whom might be a future person.

When we ask which of these outcomes would be better, we are asking

whether, if one future person would later live for one year longer, that

would be better than if the possible person who would later exist would

be the person whose life would be twenty years longer. The answer, I

believe, is No. If Jack will later live to seventy and Jane will live to eighty,

that would be better than if Jack will later live to seventy-one and Sally

will live to sixty. On this view, Jack’s one extra year of life would do less

to make the outcome better than the twenty more years that would be

lived by Jane rather than by Sally.



Principles

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Suppose next that we are considering this case at some much later

time. Jack is aged seventy, and is about to die. We know that we could

choose whether the outcome will be A or B. We could either enable

Jack to live for one more year, or cause it to be Jane rather than Sally

who will later exist and live for twenty more years. Since Jack is about

to die, we may believe that we ought to save Jack’s life, even though we

would give him only one more year. On this view, our moral reason to

save Jack’s life would be stronger than our reason to cause it to be Jane

rather than Sally who would later exist.

Though this belief is fairly plausible, we could not justifiably change

our view about the relative goodness of these outcomes. This relative

goodness cannot depend either on when we compare these outcomes,

or on which of these outcomes would be what actually happens, or

comes about. If it was earlier true that outcome A would be better than

outcome B, it could not later be true that outcome B would be better

than outcome A, nor could it be true that B would have been better

than A. If we believe that, when Jack is about to die, we ought to save

Jack’s life, we should claim that we ought to save Jack’s life even though

this is not the act that would make things go best.19

We might then believe that

(P) we ought to give some benefits to actual people rather than giv-

ing some greater benefits to people who are now merely possible

and who, if we did not give them these benefits, would never exist.

We might similarly believe that

(Q) we ought to give some benefits to presently existing people

rather than giving some greater benefits to future people.

Though these beliefs are fairly plausible, they are about the rightness of

acts, not the goodness of outcomes. We could not defensibly believe that,

in giving such lesser benefits to actual people, or to presently existing peo-

ple, we would be making things go better. If we gave similar benefits to

people who are now merely possible, or to future people, these benefits

19. At this point in the text, Parfit had a note to himself and to readers of the draft that

read “[some material to be added here].”


would do as much to make things go better. But we might defensibly

believe that we ought to give such lesser benefits to presently existing

people even though these acts would make things go worse. These beliefs

would be like the view that we ought to save our children’s lives rather

than saving the lives of more children who are strangers to us. This view

does not imply that it would be better if it would be our children’s lives

that were saved. We can believe that we ought to save our children’s lives,

though it would be worse if more children die. We are sometimes morally

required to act in ways that would not make things go best.

Though we can plausibly believe that we ought to give such lesser

benefits to presently existing people, rather than giving greater benefits

to other people, we should remember that, if we and many others often

act in such ways, we and others may together make things go much

worse. We might save some present people from harm rather than sav-

ing future people from some greater harms. Our successors might do

the same, and their successors might do the same, thereby making the

quality of future people’s lives lower, and lower, and lower. With such

acts, we and our successors might together wreck the Earth.

VI. DIFFERENT NUMBER CASES

I have been discussing Mixed Same Number Cases. In such cases,

though no one would exist in all of the outcomes that we are consider-

ing, some people would exist in more than one of these outcomes. We

should also consider cases in which no one would exist in more than

one outcome. In such cases, no outcome would be worse for anyone

than any other outcome. When we think about the further future, most

of the important questions are about such cases.

Suppose that, in Case Six, either

A: Many people will exist whose quality of life would be very high

or

B: Many other people will exist whose lives would be barely worth

living.



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Neither of these outcomes would be worse for anyone. Though the

people in B would not have good lives, it would not have been better

for them if they had never existed. Since B would be worse for no one,

the Strong Narrow Principle implies that B could not be worse than A,

and the Weak Principle fails to imply that B would be worse. It is clear,

however, that B would be worse than A. This case provides a strong

objection to these Narrow Principles. This objection is stronger if, as I

have argued, we can reject these Narrow Principles but can still explain

this part of morality—the part concerned with well-being—in person-

affecting terms. We can claim that there can be intrinsic existential

benefits, since it is good to be caused to exist and have a life that is

worth living. Since the people in B have lives that are barely worth liv-

ing, this outcome gives these people only weak existential benefits.

Outcome A would give to as many other people great existential bene-

fits. B would be worse than A, as the Wide Principle implies, because B

would be much less good for people. Compared with existing and hav-

ing some high quality of life, it would be much less good to exist and

have a life that is barely worth living.20

Different Number Cases raise several other new questions. To intro-

duce one of these questions, we can suppose that, in Case Seven, two

possible outcomes are:

A: Tom willlive to 40

Dick willlive to 40

B: Tom willlive to 80

________

I believe that, of these outcomes, B would be better than A. That is

what most of us would believe.

As one way to defend this belief, some people might appeal to the

Two-Tier View. B would give Tom an ordinary comparative benefit of forty

more years of life. A would give Dick a non-comparative existential bene-

fit of forty years of life. On the Two-Tier View, comparative benefits have

greater moral weight, by doing more to make outcomes better. If compar-

ative benefits have even slightly more weight, B would be better than A.

20. Parfit here had a note to himself and to readers of the draft that read “[material to

be added].”


This view, I have claimed, is false. Most benefits are in one way com-

parative, since we receive such benefits when the alternatives would have

been worse for us. But these benefits are comparative only in the sense

that they are the greater of two intrinsic benefits. These benefits are not

essentially comparative. In Case Seven, there are two possible intrinsic

benefits. Outcome A would give Dick the existential benefit of forty years

of life, and outcome B would give Tom the comparative benefit of forty

more years of life. This benefit to Tom would not be much greater, or do

much more to make the outcome better, than this benefit to Dick. Dick’s

forty years of life would not be made to be less good for him by the fact

that Dick’s non-existence would not have been worse for him or bad for

him. Since existential benefits are intrinsic, such benefits do as much as

comparative benefits to make outcomes better.

There is a different way to explain why, in Case Seven, B would be

better than A. In outcome A, Tom and Dick would together live for a

total of eighty years. In outcome B, Dick would not exist and Tom

would live for eighty years. Since A would benefit Dick about as much

as B would benefit Tom, these outcomes would give both people

roughly the same total sum of benefits. We can ask

Q4: Would it be in itself better if the same sum of benefits came to

fewer people?

The rough answer, I believe, is Yes. We can claim that

(R) when two outcomes would give people the same total sum of

benefits, it would be in one way better if these benefits were shared

equally between fewer people.21

If Tom lives to forty and Dick lives to forty, that would be less good

than if Tom lives to eighty and Dick never exists.

There are other, clearer cases. In considering Q4, we can imagine

people whose lives could go better or worse, not merely by being longer

or shorter, but in other ways. These people would have, in their lives as

a whole, different levels or amounts of well-being. People at higher

21. Compare the Consolidate Additional Benefits View in Temkin’s Rethinking the

Good, p. 68.



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151

levels would have greater sums of benefits, which we can represent

with numbers. We might suppose, for example, that

Adam is at level 100, Bill is at level 50, and Charles is at level 1.

In being at level 1, Charles would be not far above the zero level at

which lives are not worth living. Bill’s level would be much higher.

Compared with Charles’s sum of benefits, Bill’s sum would be about

fifty times greater. Adam’s sum of benefits would be about twice as

great as Bill’s. These differences between these levels of well-being

would be much less precise than these numbers suggest.

We can now suppose that, in Case Eight, either

A: One person will exist at level 100

or

B: Ten other people will exist at level 10.

These outcomes would each give people the same total sum of benefits.

On the view summed up by (R), A would be better than B. That is what

most of us would believe.

In considering this view, we can distinguish between two senses or

ways in which one of two outcomes might benefit people more. One

outcome would

benefit people more in the collective sense if this outcome would

together benefit people more,

and

benefit people more in the individual sense if this outcome would

benefit each person more.

We can first consider outcomes in which there would be no inequality

between different people. Everyone would have the same quality of life or

level of well-being. Inequalities raise complications that are best considered

elsewhere. That is one reason why the answer to Q4 is only roughly Yes.


When we compare outcomes in which the same number of people

would exist, and there would be no inequality between people, these

two ways of benefiting people more always coincide. If one of two out-

comes would together give people a greater total sum of benefits, and

each person would get an equal share of this greater sum, each person

would get an equal benefit. In such cases, we need not distinguish

between these two ways of benefiting people more.

When we consider Different Number Cases, however, we have rea-

sons to draw this distinction. In such cases, the Wide Person-Affecting

Principle can take two forms. According to

The Wide Collective Principle: One of two outcomes would be in one

way better if this outcome would together benefit people more, by

giving people a greater total sum of benefits.

According to

The Wide Individual Principle: One of two outcomes would be in

one way better if this outcome would benefit each person more.

When I first discussed wide person-affecting principles, I considered only

this Collective Principle.22 This principle, I claimed, might solve the

Non-Identity Problem. But I then rejected this principle. According to

The Impersonal Total Principle: It would always be better if there was a

greater total sum of well-being, such as a greater sum of happiness.

This principle seems to imply





These very many people’s lives might together contain a greater total

sum of well-being, just as there might be a greater mass of milk in a

22. Parfit, Reasons and Persons, pp. 396–401.



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153

vast heap of bottles that each contained only one drop. The Wide Col-

lective Principle, I assumed, restates the Impersonal Total Principle in

person-affecting terms. This person-affecting version of the Total Prin-

ciple seemed to provide a stronger argument for the Repugnant Con-

clusion. Compared with denying that outcomes would be better if they

increased the total sum of well-being, it seemed harder to deny that

outcomes would be better if they benefited people more. That might be

true, I assumed, if there existed enough people who each received the

slight benefit of having a life that was barely worth living. Because the

Repugnant Conclusion seemed to me very implausible, I claimed that

we ought to reject this Wide Collective Principle.

This claim made two mistakes. We cannot justifiably reject strong

arguments merely by claiming that their conclusions are implausible.

And rather than rejecting this Collective Principle, I should have com-

bined this principle with the Individual Principle. According to this

Wide Dual Person-Affecting Principle: One of two outcomes would

be in one way better if this outcome would together benefit people

more, and in another way better if this outcome would benefit each

person more.

This principle is, I believe, the best version of the Wide Principle that I

have been discussing. This principle appeals, I shall more briefly say,

both to the benefits to each and to the benefits to all.

In some cases, one of two outcomes would be better in only one of

these ways. This Dual Principle plausibly implies that

if N people existed at level 100, this would be better than if 2N peo-

ple existed instead at level 50.

The first outcome would be better because the benefits to each would

be greater and the benefits to all would be the same. This principle also

plausibly implies that

if 2N people existed at 100, this would be better than if N people

existed at 100.


The first outcome would be better because the benefits to all would be

greater and the benefits to each would be the same.

In many other cases one of two outcomes would be better in one of

these two ways, but worse in the other way. We can then ask which out-

come would be better all things considered.

We can plausibly believe that slightly greater benefits to each would

be outweighed by much greater benefits to all, and slightly greater ben-

efits to all would be outweighed by much greater benefits to each.

Suppose next that, in Case Nine, either

A: N people will exist at 100

or

B: 2N people will exist at 75.

The two parts of the Wide Dual Principle here more strongly conflict.

Outcome A would benefit each person much more, but outcome B

would together benefit people much more. We may find it harder to

decide which of these outcomes would be better. To answer such ques-

tions, we must compare the relative importance of these two ways of

benefiting people more. I can only start to do that here.

Suppose that, in Case Ten, either

A: One million people will exist at level 1,000

or

Z: One hundred billion people will exist at level 1.

As these numbers overly precisely imply, the lives of the people in out-

come Z would not be well worth living, since these lives would not be

much above the zero level at which lives are not worth living. The lives

of the people in outcome A would be very well worth living. In each of

these outcomes, the total sum of benefits would roughly correspond to

the number of people who would exist multiplied by their level of well-

being. In outcome A, this total sum of benefits would be roughly a

thousand million, which is a billion. In outcome Z, this total sum would



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155

be greater, since it would be roughly a hundred billion. If we appealed

only to the Wide Collective Principle, we would have to conclude that Z

would be better than A. This would be one version of the Repugnant

Conclusion.

The Wide Dual Principle does not imply this conclusion. This princi-

ple appeals not only to collective but also to individual benefits. In

Case Ten, Z would be collectively better than A, since Z would together

benefit people roughly a hundred times more. But Z would be individu-

ally worse than A, since Z would benefit each person roughly a thou-

sand times less. The lives of the people in A would be roughly a

thousand times more worth living. We can plausibly believe that this

second fact would do much more to make this outcome better. On this

version of the Wide Dual Principle, Z would be worse than A.

Compared with the existence of many people whose quality of life

would be very high, it would be worse if there existed instead a hun-

dred thousand times as many people whose lives would be barely

worth living. That is what most of us would believe. On this view, we

might roughly say, though it matters whether what happens would

together benefit people more, it matters more whether what happens

would benefit each person more.

Here is another way to ask what we believe. According to





This conclusion seems repugnant because there seems to be little that

is good in a world in which everyone’s life would be so close to the zero

level. Consider next this

Analogous Conclusion: Compared with the existence of many people

whose lives would be barely worth living, there is some much higher

quality of life whose being had by everyone would be better, even

though the numbers of people who exist would be much smaller.

Few of us would find this conclusion repugnant. Many of us would

believe that, if everyone’s quality of life would be very high, this


outcome would be very good, though it would be even better if more

such lives were lived. On this view, we would believe that in Case

Eleven, compared with the existence of

one hundred billion people whose lives would be barely worth

living,

it would be better if there existed

one million people whose quality of life would be roughly a thou-

sand times higher.

This outcome would be better even though, because many fewer peo-

ple would exist, the total sum of benefits would be roughly a hundred

times smaller.

As these remarks show, the Wide Dual Principle does not imply the

Repugnant Conclusion. This principle would often imply that one of

two outcomes would be better though the people who exist would have

a much smaller total sum of benefits. Such outcomes might be better,

though these benefits would come to many fewer people, because

these people’s quality of life would be higher.

These remarks do not show that, if we can justifiably appeal to this

Wide Principle, we can thereby avoid the Repugnant Conclusion. If we

believe that it would always be in one way better if there existed more

people who would together have a greater total sum of benefits, this belief

might be one premise of more complicated and forceful arguments for

the Repugnant Conclusion. But this Wide Principle would be only one of

our beliefs. We might also justifiably believe that great losses in the quality

of people’s lives could not be outweighed by any increase in the sum of

benefits, if these benefits came in the lives of people whose quality of life

would be much lower. I have started to defend this belief elsewhere.



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